We’d taken a leisurely 5 days to get from Melbourne to Adelaide via the Great Ocean Road, and we had to get back to Melbourne Airport (avoiding the Grand Prix chaos) for our flight home, so opted to make the return trip wine-focussed on a slightly inland (and quicker) route. Warning – if you aren’t that interested in wine, probably best to stop reading now (or jump to the end for the tale of our adventure to get home).

There are a number of distinct wine regions in the vicinity of Adelaide – from cool-climate hills right next to the city to world-famous valleys a short drive away – Adelaide Hills, McLaren Vale, Clare Valley, Adelaide Plain, Langhorne Creek, Eden Valley, and possibly the most well known…

The Barossa Valley

Just an hour North of the city, as soon as we turned off the freeway (one of the few ‘motorways’ that we’d encountered) we saw that the Barossa was very different to any of the wine regions we’d visited so far – the scale was another level, with vineyards stretching as far as the eye could see, and the scenery far more dramatic. The ‘biblical’ rain was still forecast and the sky was almost black – rather disappointing as Debbie had booked a hotel with pool with the intention of having a relaxing afternoon in the sun, sipping wine. But our covered balcony at the Novotel Barossa Valley, overlooking the mammoth Jacob’s Creek vineyards, offered a nice place to sip wine despite the weather.

We’d booked a wine tour as neither of us fancied being Dessie Driver and we suspected that Barossa wines may be rather enjoyable. Again we were the only guests as another couple had cancelled the previous day – fabulous, a private tour for the price of a group excursion. It seems that driving wine tour buses is a popular thing for retired folk to do to stay busy – our driver Phil was a typical Aussie bloke with the biggest moustache we’d seen in a while (and lots of Aussie blokes have tashes), whose son-in-law was about to move to the UK to play cricket for Hampshire.

First stop was Chateau Tanunda – one of Australia’s most historically significant wineries and the cornerstone of the Barossa wine industry established in 1890, the site of the Valley’s first winery, as well as its first vineyards planted back in 1843. It certainly was a most impressive building and the setting for the wine tasting was magnificent. Unfortunately ‘tours’ were offered tastings of the cheaper ranges, which were OK, but we soon made it clear that weren’t going to purchase wines that were available in Sainsburys & M&S back home and so needed to be offered a more premium selection to sample. Now these were good! Shiraz is the speciality of Barossa and we compared examples from different terroirs within the valley, preferring the ‘Ebeneezer District’ to the slightly higher altitude ‘Eden Valley’. The lady running the tasting seemed rather surprised when we bought a bottle – perhaps she’s used to people on wine tours just getting p*ssed on free samples with no intention of purchasing. That’ll be why they don’t usually get the good stuff out then, and there was no chance of getting a drop of the $600/bottle Everest Museum Release.

Next was Lambert Estate – the total opposite of Chateau Tanunda, modern, elegant and fun. The place was American owned, with the son and his Peruvian wife being the winemakers, and exhibited art alongside the quirkily-named wines and delicious food. We tried a huge range of wines – including ‘Nordic Frost‘ Riesling, ‘First Kiss‘ Rose, ‘The Commitment‘ Shiraz and ‘The Chocolatier‘ Tawny, and there was a story behind every name. We particularly enjoyed the Shiraz but opted to have a glass with lunch rather than purchase a bottle – our time in Australia was running out and there were only so many bottles we could drink before getting on the plane.

And then to Ubertas, a tiny boutique winery owned by a pair of Taiwanese brothers. A gem waiting to be discovered, their wines were fabulous and, although we obviously preferred their most expensive Project D Shiraz, we settled on a bottle of their smooth ‘Wild North’ Shiraz Cabernet blend – oh well, we’d have to drink more quickly before leaving!

The final stop blew the others out of the water despite first impressions being a little underwhelming. Rusden is owned by a 6th generation Barossa family of German descent who live within feet of the cellar door and are all involved with the business. These folk are always the last in the valley to harvest their grapes, thus giving their wines a slightly sweeter nature. The range was huge and as we progressed through our tasting, we just kept saying “WOW” – and then we were given a special treat, a taste of the £250/bottle 2016 ‘Sandscrub’ Shiraz which was advertised as ‘not for tasting’. We’d had a good hour or so chatting to the cellar door guy, he was very fond of England and was about to come over to do the Coast-to-Caost walk, and he saw that we’d appreciate the wine. Oh my word! But we weren’t that frivolous!! We did however find room for 2 less pricey but still stunningly good bottles – ‘Chookshed’ Zinfandel, produced with grapes that have shrivelled on the vine and rather like Amarone, and ‘Rocky Valley Road’ Trousseau, with a unique but quite delicious sweet & sour nature. There is a UK stockist for Rusden wines, so we may well be looking up Caviste Independent Wine Merchants in Hook when we get home.

We both agreed that, for reds, the Barossa Valley was THE standout Australian wine region and we’d have happily stayed a few more days. Our credit card will have breathed a sigh of relief that we didn’t though!

The journey back to Melbourne was almost 500 miles and 9 hours driving by the quickest route, too much to do in one day, so we broke the journey at Halls Gap, at the Northern end of the beautiful Grampians National Park. Our little chalet at Halls Haven was basic but set in fabulous grounds overlooking the mountains, with peacocks roaming freely, and at dusk the kangaroos appeared to graze right outside our room – magical. We had intended to explore the area, but events overtook us and the chaos of flight cancellations caused by the Iran situation became more pressing – so instead of marvelling at the natural splendour of The Grampians we instead spent our time there sorting out alternative flights home (more on that later) before moving on to our final destination.

The Yarra Valley

We’d decided to stay an hour out of Melbourne for our final 2 nights to avoid the sky high Grand Prix prices, and somehow Debbie convinced Steve that we should finish our holiday in style – so much for avoiding the high hotel prices! Her justification was that we could stay somewhere gorgeous for the same price as a Holiday Inn Express at Melbourne Airport. Re’em is a recently opened boutique hotel and gourmet restaurant attached to the Helen & Joey winery – it looked lovely on their website and it was beautiful in real life. Set on a lake, surrounded by manicured gardens and complete with a helipad – surely we were a bit too scruffy for this place? A complimentary wine tasting of the entire Helen & Joey range brought several surprises – firstly, Debbie didn’t actually like their expensive flagship Chardonnay; secondly, their Re’em Sauvignon Blanc was so good that it’s now overtaken Marlborough’s Greywacke Wild Sauvignon as Debbie’s favourite white wine (that she could afford to buy semi-regularly); and thirdly, the biggest shock, we found a Pinot Noir that we actually liked, and REALLY liked at that! Sadly we still had wine to drink from Barossa, and no spare luggage allowance, so we weren’t able to purchase anything – but we did have lunch booked at Re’em the following day so could enjoy more of their wines then.

Steve agreed to be Dessie Driver the next morning as the Yarra Valley is more famous for white wines, but Debbie did agree to limit herself to just a couple of vineyards before lunch.

Oakridge Wines are apparently the Chardonnay stars of the Yarra Valley so naturally Debbie wanted to partake in their Chardonnay Masterclass. Oakridge produce Chablis-style Chardonnay, not the oaky wines that Debbie prefers and had enjoyed so much in the Margaret River region earlier in our trip, but she did appreciate the 2017 Hazeldene Vineyard version at $80/bottle and preferred it to the higher altitude and younger award-winning 864 Single Block $100 bottles. A beautiful vineyard with lovely views and very friendly & knowledgable staff, but the wines weren’t as outstanding as Debbie had hoped.

Despite the warning from Oakridge that our next destination was touristy and didn’t have the best wines, and recommendation of some better places to try, we nevertheless continued to Domaine Chandon, established by Moet & Chandon in 1986. It was indeed touristy, but it was fun, in a stunning location, most visitors were dressed in their finery – this was more about a place to be seen than the wine. But fizz was very good, far nicer than cheap champagne and at a lower price point. We’ve not done a visit to the Champagne region so didn’t have much experience of tasting different styles of fizz – Debbie knows what she likes and Steve thinks its a load of pretentious nonsense – but the tutored tasting gave a good insight into 5 quite different styles.

And so back to Re’em for a late lunch overlooking the gardens and vineyard – and what a treat it was. The restaurant seamlessly blends Helen & Joey’s Chinese heritage with premium seasonal Australian produce, in a menu designed by culinary consultant Mark Ebbels, formerly of Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck. We opted for the 4-course shared tasting menu – delicious handmade dumplings to start, followed by a genius chilli crab on egg custard (served in a ceramic giant egg shell) and smoked duck, main courses of Kung Pao Kangaroo (delicious) and beef short rib with dried tangerine, and a couple of fabulously inventive deserts which included sweet potato and Sichuan pepper. Each course was accompanied by a VERY generous glass of a suitably matched wine, which included more of the Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir that we’d liked so much. Utterly fabulous and well worth the splurge. All that remained was an afternoon sitting on our balcony soaking up the view (and more wine), a cheese platter for the evening, and a very early departure for the airport the next day. As we were leaving well before the crack of dawn, and missing out on the lovely Chinese-fusion breakfast, we were sent on our way with a luxury breakfast hamper to eat at the airport – we weren’t sure about the smoked salmon and cream cheese terrine with almond croissants though!

Getting home

Unfortunately for us, we were booked on a Qatar Airways flight via Doha on 6th March and, given the situation that’d recently kicked off in Iran, the Qatar airspace was closed and all flights cancelled. Qatar claim to be the best airline in the world, but someone we’d met in Barossa told us that they were great in the air but shocking on the ground if things go wrong. He was absolutely right! We couldn’t get any information, had no idea whether our flight would go or not, all Qatar were saying is that we could cancel and get a refund or re-book for a later date (with no guarantee when flights would resume). Obviously the events in The Gulf were outside the control of the airline, but we heard that Emirates and Etihad were doing a MUCH better job of dealing with their stranded passengers.

Ordinarily we’d have happily stayed in Australia for longer and waited for the airline to get us home, but (1) our 3 month visas were about to expire (Australian Immigration had already reminded us that we needed to leave the country by 11 March), (2) Melbourne wasn’t the place to be stranded that weekend with GP prices (and no GP tickets available either), and (3) more critically Steve only had a few days of medication left which, even if we could find a way of getting someone in Australia to prescribe the drugs for his lung condition it would cost us thousands for these pills (they cost the NHS £70/day). So we decided that the most sensible option was to purchase new tickets home ourselves rather than waiting for Qatar to do something, obviously avoiding Qatar/UAE airspace. The other Asian hubs had already hiked their prices astronomically, and even the crappy Chinese airlines were charging over £2,500 each for a one-way flight which would usually cost £350-£500. So we were going to need to go ‘The Long Way Around’ via the USA – the American airlines were not yet totally ripping off stranded passengers but were still more than doubling the usual price. But before booking anything we needed to sort ESTAs as ours had expired the previous week – brilliant, even to transit through the USA you need to fork out for a ‘visa’. And then we booked flights with United Airlines, via Los Angeles, with a 12 hour layover, spending ‘just’ £1,500 more than we were going to be refunded by Qatar. It may be hard to believe but we got off lightly and we were lucky that we were able to fund ourselves and get home. Many people weren’t in such a fortunate position and it must’ve been absolutely terrifying for them – especially if money was running out and/or they were stranded in the Middle East Unfortunately travel insurance doesn’t help in war situations – passengers are totally reliant on their airline or travel agent.

Unsurprisingly, both flights were totally full, mainly with Brits doing the same as us, but United weren’t as bad as we’d feared. After the interminable immigration queues at LAX (good job we didn’t have a connecting flight within 3-4 hours!), we invested in a hotel day room so we could get some shut-eye during our 12 hour layover. 40 hours after leaving our hotel in the Yarra Valley we arrived at Heathrow, where for once the operation was super-quick and within an hour of landing we had cleared immigration, collected our bags, caught the Heathrow Express and arrived at London’s Paddington railway station. And in just another 4 hours our friends Jayne & Graham collected us from Paignton Station, re-established us in their granny flat (we are still homeless as our house is rented out), and left us to sleep with promises of a Sunday roast the next day.

That’s the end of our Great Australian Adventure and it’s time to start planning the next one – but only once we have recovered from the jet-lag…